July 2015 Checkins

The past month for me has mainly consisted in winding down and taking a break from OuiShare activites after the Fest and Summit (I spent one whole week offline last week!). I'm really happy we finally launched the new website design, which Auli, Yann, Karol and I have been working on since February, and I'm very happy with the result.

Saying that, the last weeks have been quite intense for me, as I've been spending them near NYC with my sister, taking care of my mother, who is terminally ill and needs full time care. Therefore I've been spending the majority of my time caring for her and working with family and friends to find more professional care solutions for her and ways to reduce the stress on those close to her.

So apart from this, until September, I am focusing on helping lay the foundations for OuiShare Fest 2016, following up with Summit outcomes such as clarifiying our global budget for the second half of 2015, proposing a restructuring of global coordination activities, and hopefully at least one week of real vacation. A post to clarify the first two points will will follow soon :).

Hey everybody,
An message from me on this topic (sharing what we're up to, and how to do it) is very due. I was just talking to Myriam about slowly coming back to OS after such intense months, but I could've done a better job.

Fran, I agree and upvote this thread :)
My thoughts are with you and your family as well.

// OS updates:
I've been reflecting on what Community Global is and how our roles can be best put at the service of the entire community. I still see the role of the floating jossbot, working on distributed connectivity efforts, supporting (or designing) transversal interactions between all of us, and those who are new.

I also still believe in us building projects with each other, and for our organization... possibly as much as we create for the outside.
A post on the FB Connectors group is going up this week, which I'm linking to how we can share contributions and what we are learning; I wished to include a solution and not just roadblocks.

Lastly, I started conversations about governance; sketched ideas and had Hangouts to develop projects in Mexico and Asia; we're regrouping Colaboramerica this week; I sketched and proposed a model to support Volunteers and the team in BCN, as they approach the Fest and there's a need to build and maintain relationships before, during, and after the Fest; and started structuring the knowledge I have on Welcoming, Onboarding, and the Community role in a collaborative organization, to share with all of you (and sister organizations, and the world) this fall.

// Personal updates:
I've validated that I need to explain better how geeky and introvert I am, to set realistic expectations when I'm around peeps (I do not hate humans, I love you!). My sister told our teenage cousins she's gay (and their response was so so so positive, for having grown up in today's Mexican society :) We are all happy).
I'm back to sleeping and reading (Roth and Durrell) and drawing, and decided to move to Europe as soon as I can get a visa sorted out (hopefully this fall!)

Thanks Fran for starting this.
xx

(I moved my comment on updating our communication protocols to a discussion over here: https://www.loomio.org/d/GtsdOwVD/updating-our-communication-protocols)

well, I was about to post a facebook connector group update on my last 3-4 months changes of life, and now this appears here, and your question Jocelyn resonates with my incapacity to know where to put / find the correct information.

Thank you Francesca for sharing your update and all my positive vibes for you & the family! <3

Great idea @francesca :) and take care.

After the Fest I'm still working on OuiShare newsletters both global and community (only for members) which I'm really enjoying. I'm also in a process of reassessing the newsletters and conduct a small research on the type content, design from a user perspective. In the past we didn't have many "unsubscribe" rate but there is a problem with "opening rates" of the newsletter. I'll soon propose my results and ask for your suggestions.

I have been also working on an internal project- Content strategy with Simone and Lucia of which we proposed the results at Summit and will soon move to its next phase of coordination.

After Summit, I'm very happy to be part of Sharitories team for which we have many cool plans. The team is really motivated and we have many tasks to finish and get organised by September. I'm also putting my efforts in finding opportunities for Sharitories in Brussels and we might have 2 big events in October (Europe Refresh & CrowdSourcing Week).

I'm now in India and not working for long hours as I see my family once a year and it is nice if I participate in their day-to-day works :)

My personal feelings: I'm happy to be working with all of you. You guys are so Inspiring! I feel it is bringing in me every day a positive change and clarity. Thank you all :)

This is a really nice initiative @francesca I really like it. Every 3 months can be a good rhythm for a start.

My update :
Since the summit I'm jumping on and off internet, taking some days of vacation and then trying to focus back on work, and I see I'm fare more successful at disconnecting, which brings some "guilt" spirit to my mind (All these things I wanted to work on this summer... :-/)

Still,
On OuiShare :
- I'm on an article for a livre blanc about "Value creation & collaborative economy" (first time I do that kind of exercice, not easy)
- I have to clean the accounting and last little tasks of my post-OuiShare Village, and would like to document the wiki about it
- finish post-summit actions with the analysis of the survey
- and I wanted to use also summer to focus on the next steps for Ouicare
then I'm in to help propose some "content / thematics & projects" for the students of the IAE (University) of Caen that Edwin will be "mentoring" this year; contributing to the post-summit actions (governance above all); also contributing a little to the deceleration week program. Also, there will be in 2016 an event around Laloux/Teal organizations in Paris that OuiShare will be partner with and I'm following the subject, but the real work on it will start on september.

I was finally hopping I could find some time to keep on learning about collective intelligence, business and society transformation and so on this summer (so many things to read!!) :-) and finally find time to think how I can mix all that in a sustainable way of living, but I was a bit ambitious ;-)

So right now I'm feeling totally unproductive and lazy I admit, but still very grateful to be part of the community :-)

Hi everyone, and thank you @francesca for this initiative! I also think once every three months is a good rythm.

I feel at the moment so enthusiastic about the amazing subjects I have the chance to work on, especially, all the work we have started in designing the global collaborative governance of Open Food Network (which is an interesting parallel to the work in OuiShare). I had a meeting with Primavera on Monday and it seems Backfeed's protocol is not (yet) adapted to non-profit initiatives which are challenging the market economy... but I'll right a dedicated post on the subject.

We have just installed the French version of Open Food Network with an amazing team of 5 energized people, so it feels to me like a bunch of fresh air compared to the heavy launch in Norway... so I feel like preparing my return to France and we are starting to talk about it with my boyfriend... we are missing good food too much :-)

I am now involved in 4 main "organizations", and I have to manage to split my available time to do all the tasks I commit to for all of them, and it's really great because those projects nourish one another, but it's also a bit if anxiety sometimes, especially the idea of taking real holidays and disconnect is a source of anxiety by itself ;-) But I breathe and meditate, and I manage to live in peace with that ;-)
1- Open Food Network Norway: I'm still trying to build the community so that not everything rely on me, and I'm building a pilote buying club to test the platform. I'm also looking for solutions to have the needed technical adaptations done.
2- Open Food Network France: I'm launching the first networking and communication operations, as well as sorting out the technical issues we are facing so that the test platform work.
3- Open Food Network international: I'm sharing the role of international community building, so talking all the time to people from all over the world who want to know more about OFN and mentoring them in their starting phase, as well as designing the OFN global organization & governance. I'm participating to the deceleration week in October as OFN is among the OuiShare Awards winners ;-)
4- OuiShare: I'm also getting involved in the organization design process which is just starting, and I'm in the process of writing different articles about the evolution of the food system and about the P2P interactions dimension of collaborative economy, which are topics I want to investigate more deeply within OuiShare. I also start organizing a conference about money in Norway.

That's it!

Hello all, and thank you, Fran, for starting this :)

Within OuiShare, my main focus points since the Fest have been:

• number one: the website
  , happy about the launch - a big milestone achieved! and now the work continues.

• designing the shared and collaborative tech infrastructure setup and management plan (OuiShare-Ecobytes-IndieHosters collaboration idea; presented on Summit) - currently on standby, waiting for the finalizing of the budget, then we can hopefully launch into action.

• planning the OuiShare Hello II experiment with Joss and withknown.com team, more on this in the coming months.

• my current priority for the upcoming week or two is to finalize and write a report on the Litemap test (part of EU Catalyst programme) which has additionally revealed some interesting aspects of how our community operates, discusses and uses tools.

Besides that, I’ve participated in IndieWebCamps in Düsseldorf (May) and Brighton (July), met some very cool tech people and shared my observations of OuiShare relationship with web and community tools. The IndieWeb adventure continues (more closely with Hello/Known).

I’ve just returned from a mostly offline** week in Bretagne where I went to sing, learn a lot of songs and give concerts with my choir and some 100 other people. It was awesome and intense, and while I’m seriously rethinking the point of it (for the next year), considering the burst of energy I feel about getting at OuiShare stuff again right now, such getaways with a different focus might be a good way to get re-inspired every once in a while. And I want to build a tech infra system that supports such approach :)))

** mostly offline because I ended up having a lot of mail conversations about osfbcn web and eventually started replying all kinds of (OuiShare) mails just because I wanted to :D

Hi all,
These checkins are awesome but maybe we need to figure out a way to share them in a presentation format with images on google docs?
It may be hard to read all this text without imagery :-)

Anyway, over the past months I went through some tough, passive, demotivated period. But now I'm back to planning the next projects and super excited.

1- Another OuiShare Drink, but this time it's a full day.
In order to shake things with the community in Beirut, I am planning a collaborative experience, a day where people come and swap things with others, a credit system would be created for the swapping and with the credit points people can get drinks, food, besides the swapping between each other...
It will be followed by OuiShare Drink. Date: September 30.
Who's interested to join?

2- ratherDESIGN competition
I have been designing a competition for the MENA region, it includes 3 categories: Service Design and collaborative economy, Product Innovation, and Sustainable Living. I will be sharing all the info with @asmaaguedira and working together along with MENA connectors on spreading the competition regionally.
Call for proposals should be December 2015-January 2016

3- OuiXpertise
After a long sleeping period, I have recently been giving workshops to new entries at commune NGO on designing services, and one of the examples was OuiXpertise. They are interested in helping me make it happen and we are starting the work right after August. Lovely! so we're back!

Xxxx

Hey,

On the first half of July I worked on Sharetribe stuff (I won't bore you with the details, but let me know if you'd like to hear more about what Sharetribe is up to also! :) On the second half of July, I took a vacation of 2 weeks. I disconnected from emails, twitter, facebook, and everything related to sharing & collaborative economy. It felt good, and now it's good to be back. :)

One interesting thing that I've been working on lately is that we're now collaborating with Cristobal on creating a step by step guide for aspiring collaborative economy entrepreneurs who want to create their own peer-to-peer marketplace. This is a major effort that will be published at the Marketplace Academy, a website we're currently building at Sharetribe (launch will be this fall) to offer education and inspirational content to these entrepreneurs. We still haven't concluded on the exact branding of the guide, but perhaps a label like "powered by OuiShare" might make sense.

If anyone has ideas related to the marketplace academy, or how it could be better connected to OuiShare projects, let me know!

I appreaciate this regular updates idea, and agree that as of now 3 months is a good start. Thanks Fran!
It's incredible how all your updates resonate with my impressions.

// OuiShare updates //

After the summit I had right forward the Commons Camp which gave me a non-stop job for two weeks more. It was pleasant, and immensely important in terms of learning for my personal and professional growth.

#commons camp#
Still, I think it was a total failure since I was not able to make it appealing enough for the OuiShare community itself, and at the end me and other two people (Daniele Bucci and Sebastiano Pirisi) did all the job in designing and selling the event - without taking a cent. Without these two angels I couldn't really make it. Now, they want to bring the Commons Camp brand up, as in fact, people loved it - and to be the first iteration, with no budget at all, the external perceived success is quite good. So they're organising local events mainly on digital fabrication with this brand. It's good.

#stepping back from italy#
I like it but I decided to step back from this, and mainly from other italian activities.

In fact, after all these weeks (Summit + Commons Camp) I took a week on vacation totally disconnected, then came back to Torino for all August where I had time to think deeply about my life, what I want to achieve, and what directions I was taking.

I had great days alone observing all what's happening, what could have happened, and what could happen. Concerning OuiShare, I took decisions that are in relation to certain disucssions we had at the summit and in the Italian team meetups.

#focusing more on global OS#
I think that any local effort it's personally pointless if I do not take the time to contribute in re-designing our global social system inside OuiShare. I love the insights brought in first instance by jossbot. At the summit we all had great talks, debates, and visions on how to fix stuff systematically. Still, I'm not seeing enough engagement throughout the community. I know, we are stigmergic and so we should not force people in participating stuff, but here we're not talking about a project. We're talking about the future of OuiShare....

The praxis that has been loosely consolidated so far has worked inside this community, mainly due to the remarkable effort of few, but now time has changed and these people are clearly and naturally loosing their ability to engage a growing community. IMHO we should take a serious reflection on how we can smartly and inclusively address engagement, value accounting and empowerement of people & projects inside this community. I fear that some people will soon loose their passion if they don't see commitment and mutual willing of doing OuiShare.

These reflections of course depressed me but mostly they pushed me in rationalising my focus on what I think it matters. For me now it matters to give light to what I call the Trinity: "Hello+Governance+Care". These are three pillars that fundamentally touch some of the most urgent needs of OuiShare.

I will take time in expressing these concerns in a separated loomio discussion, where I want to ask you: What are in your opinion the most urgent issues of OuiShare?

Other updates:
Well, quite personal above, so nothing special to add besides:
* I had close encounter to death and sorrow this summer, and it made me think more seriously about life and what matters the most.
* If everything goes well I'll move to London next spring
* I'm helping Simone coping with his job while he's learning to be a great father. This is giving me the opportunity to learn from such a great friend and mentor while working on "meaningful conversations"
* trying to catch-up with all these loomio conversations after two months out of it
* Love you.

: ^ )